The British esports organisation has signed Slaven “AwaykeN” Lyubenov for the second time. AwaykeN‘s first stint on Viperio was an exceptionally short one lasting only a few hours during the course of December in 2023 during which the Bulgarian sniper, who resides in the UK, never donned the Black and Red Viperio Jersey and instead quickly transferred to 7AM.
AwaykeN will be linking up again with his former teammate in the form of Rasmus “zodi” Frølich and former coach Daniel “Papp” Hart. Together they won the 2023 ESL Premiership Autumn where AwaykeN showed off his AWPing prowess to beat Endpoint in a 2-1 affair in which AwaykeN was the best performing player for the winning side.
The addition of AwaykeN sees Danish AWPer Kim “mAnGo” Larsen moved to the Viperio bench. In the five month period that mAnGo was on the active roster for Viperio he posted a 1.01 HLTV rating across his 33 maps recorded on the site. According to an article posted on Viperio’s website, the Danish sniper and Viperio were not able to agree on terms for a contract extension, resulting in Viperio signing AwaykeN as a replacement.
ESEA main playoffs will be mAnGo‘s final outing with the team before AwaykeN takes over AWPing duties for the British club.
Speaking to Viperio, AwaykeN had this to say when re-joining his former club:
It feels good to play under a UK organisation again, now I can finally play for Viperio. My expectations are to improve constantly, to play more HLTV matches, and to really prove ourselves across Tier 2 and 3.
Echoing a similar sentiment of high expectations Papp said this in the same article:
I am very excited to be welcoming Slav back into our active roster, we have achieved great things with him in the past. He is hungrier than ever, and we are ready to go on to achieve even bigger things.
The finalised Viperio lineup looks like this:
Rasmus “zodi” Frølich
Rasmus “dezt” Nyström
Markus “upE” Johansson
Dimitar “Skrimo” Yanulov
Slaven “AwaykeN” Lyubenov
Daniel “papp” Hart (Coach)
